ORACLE IN CONFLICT

About 35 miles north of Tucson in the northern foothills of the
Santa Catalina mountains lies the town of Oracle, a community that
was once a bustling mining town just miles away from the Magma
copper mine, the town's major lifeline.

The high elevation, about 4,500 feet, makes the area about 10
degrees cooler than Tucson, with winter bringing a few snowfalls to
the area, sometimes enough to cancel school for a day.

But some residents say the community is not the same one they
called home only a couple of years ago.

It was about that time that the copper mine shut down, putting
hundreds of miners out of work and forced to look for other
employment.

Now, the once busy community filled with miners and their
families is much quieter. Parking lots are empty. "For Sale" signs
dot corners and curbs as people leave the area for better jobs, or
are forced out because the bank has foreclosed.

Others have decided to stay in the area, making the long commute
at early hours in the morning to jobs in Oro Valley or Tucson.

But hope is on the horizon, at least in some Oracle residents'
minds. Two planned developments near the town could bring in
thousands of people to the area over the next few decades.

Others in the community see the developments as an invasive
nuisance into their quiet lifestyles, lifestyles they believe only
Oracle can provide.

Many residents came to Oracle to escape the "rat race" as one
resident said. Others came for artistic inspiration for their
paintings or poetry.

Some were born and raised there and feel a certain loyalty to
the tight-knit community and don't want that closeness to
disappear.

Christine Baines watches her two granddaughters scamper toward a
barbed wire fence to greet Lobo, a horse that looks a little wary
of their presence. He obliges, but the girls become suddenly
apprehensive as they stop in front of him and gaze up his long neck
in wonder of his size.

"Can we pet him?" they ask their grandmother.

Baines allows the girls to touch the large animal, carefully
running their hands down his soft brown neck.

Baines, who was raised in Pinal County and now lives in Oracle,
has brought her daughters to Oracle's Farmers Market, held just off
of the town's major thoroughfare, American Avenue.

The market is held every Saturday morning and gives locals the
opportunity to sell their creations, whether it be paintings,
pottery or homemade pies.

Colorful flags flap in the breeze as cars slowly navigate
through the dirt parking lot.

Patrons make their way toward the large shade trees, under which
vendors have staked out tables, laughing and joking with each
other, scolding dogs whose noses get just a little too close for
comfort to homemade cherry pies and zucchini bread.

The market is small, which seems to be the way everybody
prefers. It represents the community they live in, they say. Close
and friendly.

Baines loves the feel of the community, but knows times are
changing.

"I know we have to develop sometime," she says. "But I have a
fear of great big development."

Baines is also a member of the Oracle Land Trust, an
organization interested in preserving Oracle's integrity as a small
community.

"I want to have something everyone can live with, like one house
at a time," she continues.

The latest development, and the largest, to be proposed near
Oracle is Willow Springs Ranch. The South Village alone, which
would be the first parcel of the 19,000 acres to be developed,
would be the site for more than 8,000 homes and would take an
estimated 20 years to build.

The site is located at the base of the Black Mountains off
Highway 79 about eight miles south of Oracle.

Alex Argueta, president of the Remington Group, the developers
of the land, promises the development will be innovative in that it
will be built using "green" building techniques like water
harvesting and solar power.

"We think there are a lot of people interested in living in a
place like Willow Springs," Argueta said.

Argueta also promised to use local people to help in the
construction of the homes.

"We're going to give them all the help they need to learn how to
build energy-efficient homes," he said.

The Pinal County Board of Supervisors approved the rezoning for
Willow Springs South Village May 16.

But a development on this scale has some Oracle residents
worried about what it will do to their water supply and the
integrity of their close-knit community.

Those concerns led to the organization of a group called Pinal
Citizens for Sustainable Communities and a petition-signing effort
to put the development up to a vote in November 2002. The effort
seemed to be successful at first, with the group obtaining almost
double the required amount of signatures by the July 2 deadline.
The petition drive marked the second successful effort to put a
large scale development on the ballot. Falcon Valley Ranch, located
about 10 miles south of Oracle, will also be on the ballot.

The group is concerned that both developments will diminish the
water supply in the area and force toxins from the University of
Arizona's Page-Trowbridge Ranch landfill into the regional aquifer
from which Oracle gets its water.

The group was, and still is, certain their petitions to put
Willow Springs on the ballot were valid. But a lawsuit against
Pinal County filed by Anam Inc., the owner of the land, and Elaine
Helzer, founder of Pinal Citizens for Positive Growth and
Development, a group funded by both Argueta and members of the
community, alleges PCSC exceeded their time limit to obtain
signatures and requests the county declare the petitions null and
void.

"I'm just anti-big development," Baines says.

That sentiment seems to be a popular one at the Farmer's Market
today.

"I don't like rapid development," says Armand Mattausch, who has
lived in Oracle with his wife for about three years after selling
his ranch in Cascabel.

He is lounging in the shade, his legs stretched out in front of
him, a baseball cap perched on his head. "What they're planning at
Willow Springs is not acceptable."

"We can't stop development," she says. "What we can do is
preserve the integrity of our community."

Paul Everman, who drives trucks for the mines still open in the
area, said his family moved to the area from Alaska three months
ago and have taken a liking to some of the baked goods at the
market in addition to the laid back Oracle lifestyle.

"We came here to get away from the rat race," he says, brushing
away crumbs from his mustache.

He says he, "like the rest of the locals," doesn't want a
development like Willow Springs to come to the area.

"I wish it wouldn't happen," he says. "People come here to get
away from all of that. I don't see how it would benefit the
community."

While some people believe development will inevitably happen,
they also hope it will not happen right away.

"Change is going to happen no matter what," says Sue Perry, who
owns a commercial cleaning business in town and sells her homemade
pies, cookies, muffins and breads at the market.

"I just finished these at two this morning," she says, wiping
imaginary perspiration from her brow.

"Oracle reminds me of a small town," she continues. "It's very
peaceful. I'll just enjoy it while I can."

Warburton has lived in Oracle for about five years, moving there
from Las Vegas for what he hoped would be a little more relaxed
lifestyle than his days as a chef.

"This is about my third or fourth career," he says,
laughing.

Warburton said an "old friend" attracted him to the area and he
doesn't want it to change.

"They're attempting to encroach on our town," he says "Do it
somewhere else."

And while he does believe that some benefits, like new
employment opportunities, will arise out of new development, he
also believes those benefits will not last.

"It will be very short-lived," he says. "A few construction
workers and gardeners might be employed, maybe, but I don't think
it will be a lasting, long-term impact.

"Plus there's the negative impact of destroying the area," he
continues. "They can never pay for that."

Kathryn and Joe Kane have lived in Oracle for more than 25 years
and felt firsthand the impact of the mine shut down.

Joe Kane used to work for the mine until it was closed. Now the
two rely on items they make to sell at Guyton's Hardware, 1210 W.
American Ave.

"Oh my goodness, business owners are desperate for business.
We've noticed a huge change. The local people just can't support
them," Kathryn Kane says. "This community is turning into a ghost
town.

"There aren't any really good attractions to bring people up
here. This is a bedroom community, where people live here but work
somewhere else, like Tucson."

Kathryn Kane says the community was much more prosperous and
popular when the mine was open.

"You had to allow an extra half hour to go to the post office,"
she says. "You always ran into people who wanted to talk. Now there
aren't many of us left."

Kane says she and her husband are "definitely business people"
but are also in the minority when it comes to opinions about
development in the area..

"We know we definitely have the minority opinion," she says.
"There are not a lot of business people in town."

Steve Ganske, broker for Oracle Realty, agrees with Kane, but
also says opinions in the community are changing.

"I think the community is starting to come around," he says. "At
first, the town was very negative about it."

Ganske, also remembers when the mine shut down and the impact it
had on the community.

"It really put a damper on the town," he says.

Since then, he says the area has certainly suffered
economically.

"You don't get as many coming in as going out," he says. "For a
lot of them, jobs are taking them somewhere else"

For others, though, the reason has not been that optimistic.

"We just put a house on the market that is lender owned," he
says, a more polite way of saying that the bank now owns the house
because the residents could no longer afford to make payments.

But he says despite the suffering economy, those opposed to
growth have a very strong voice within the community.

"The anti-growth people are very strong," he says. "When you're
that way, you can come up with all kinds of reasons to stop
development."

Some Oracle residents don't like terms like "anti-development"
and "anti-growth" when people describe them.

"I'm not anti-development," asserts Web Parton, a long-time
Oracle resident. "I never have been. They use that as an attack
word."

Parton, one of the strongest voices raising questions about
Willow Springs and Falcon Valley, says he doesn't necessarily
oppose the development, but does have concerns.

"My interests are specific," he said. "The impact on ground
water, for one. They're very vague about where the water will come
from."

Parton wrote a report last year criticizing UA's and Arizona's
handling of the Page-Trowbridge dump, alleging the water in the
aquifer near the site was not safe to drink.

"In my experience, most folks are not in favor of development,"
Parton says.

"Oracle has always been organized to chart its own course."

J.C. Huntington, another activist also concerned about issues
surrounding Willow Springs, lives in Phoenix where he works but
also owns land in Oracle with his brother and said he hopes to
retire there someday. But he also said he hopes the feel of the
community that he loves won't be impacted by a development like
Willow Springs.

Huntington says despite the closing of the mine, the community
is growing, citing the latest census figures as proof. The figures
show a growth in Oracle of 17 percent within the last 10 years.

"The mine did move out, and that was a hit," he says. "But it's
not clear to me that this area is in a massive depression."